Hydrophobia: Prophecy Review

It's the mid-21st Century, and in the midst of a global overpopulation crisis, systems engineer Kate Wilson finds herself in the middle of a terrorist attack on city-sized ocean vessel The Queen of the World.Calling themselves the Malthusians, the terrorists' twisted plan is to kill a large portion of the world's population in order to save the survivors. It's up to Kate, with the guidance of her boss, Scoot, to stop them.

Hydrophobia: Prophecy is a re-release of Hydrophobia,originally an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive, with a significant amount of changes. Having not played the first release, I cannot comment on exactly how much of an improvement Prophecy is, and any comments I make about additions to Prophecy are made based on developer Dark Energy's lengthy list of update details.

In terms of gameplay,Hydrophobia is a third person
action adventure title, with a fair bit of expected running, climbing, swimming,
shooting and puzzling; but what stops being just your average TPS is the brilliant water physics engine.

Set aboard a sinking ship, Hydrophobia obviously involves a lot of water, but this isn't just scripted, pre-determined water movement - all of the game's water moves under a very impressive water physics engine. Flowing
freely and dynamically, you'll often find yourself just messing around,
opening and closing doors to displace water and splashing around to cause waves.It is consistently impressive, but will test your rig in some of the more hectic areas.

The water isn't just for show either: you'll be using it a lot in order to solve puzzles and progress. Unfortunately, none of the puzzles are particularly original, and include things such as filling and draining rooms to move forward, electrocuting enemies with a snapped cable - water combination, and using floaty objects to float not-so-floaty objects. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just a shame that such wonderful physics go to waste on expected water-based puzzles.

Aesthetically, the game is very impressive, with the physics complimented by beautiful water reflection and refraction effects that add a lot of realism to the game.
Under the water, bubbles float about, and blood from injured submerged enemies creates red clouds; once you're back out of the water, water drips from you and characters are visibly wet.There's plenty of dynamic lighting and particles, and the high quality character and environment models help to immerse the player.

However, I did find the animations could be a bit untidy, most noticeably mouth movements out of sync with speech audio, and some of the interactions with the environment were a bit sloppy, such as grabbing barrels underwater where Kate's hands aren't quite touching the object.There
are also a few cutscenes that are clearly pre-rendered, and are very
low quality, filled with video artifacts and general fuzziness, which is a
jarring contrast to the rest of the game. Bizarrely, there are other
cutscenes that are entirely in-game, so why these videos were used
instead is not clear.

The voice acting is mixed, with some characters, or even the same character in a different scene, sounding more believable than others, and there's a fair few bizarre lines, which detracted from the experience a bit. Other ambient sounds, gun fire and background music aredecent, and are nicely muffled while underwater.

The
controls are a standard affair, apparently revamped significantly from
the original, however they can still be a bit troublesome occasionally, and I actually found that using an Xbox controller (natively supported) was much better than the keyboard controls, most likely stemming from the developer's experience with the Xbox console.

Shooting controls could have been tightened, and the cover mechanic can be a bit troublesome: while helpful for keeping out of the way of enemy fire, you may find yourself having trouble removing yourself from cover. At some points I also found that the game wouldn't let you even aim around the corner.

There's only a single weapon in the entire game - a futuristic pistol. It comes with a default pulse shot, that can be charged for more power, and used infinitely. It takes at least two fully charged shots to down an enemy, so you'll be wanting to use one of the other ammo varieties available, which include explosive gel, electric shock rounds, and fully automatic bullet fire. However, there isn't a lot of these special ammo types, so you'll want to be placing shots careful to preserve the best ones.

Firefights aren't usually too difficult, as you are able to take a fair few hits before dying, and the enemies aren't too smart. Most of your deaths will be misjudging a fairly vague damage indicator - which fades the screen and dulls audio - or running into an unexpected crowd of enemies.

There's
also a crouch mode, which allows you to be stealthier, but with a lack
of melee attack, sneaking up on enemies is fairly pointless.

During the course of the game, you can use your MAVI tablet device to analyse the environment and identify waypoints and key areas, as well as performing a simple hacking minigame where you are required to match waveforms. There is an option to show waypoints on your HUD instead of only the MAVI, but I would recommend against this as it makes the game very easy as you know exactly where the required room, person or hidden cipher is.

Later on, you are infected with nano-bots and are able to control the water via telekinesis, allowing you to create towers of water, which can knock over enemies, and even collect objects that can then be thrown. This new-found power adds a whole new element to the gameplay, and also results in more water physics fun, but it's not available for long, as the game comes to a end soon after.

Hydrophobia is a very short game, and will probably last you only 2-3 hours, and the ending doesn't come to any conclusion, which was a real shame. This entire end sequence was new for Prophecy, but nothing wrapped up, nothing was explained, and, even if you succeed in your goal, you are unsure of Kate's fate, leaving the story wide open.

Overall, Hydrophobia feels like a trial run for Dark Energy's new water physics engine, and with some tightening up of controls, and a decentlengthstory, the next Hydrophobia title could be excellent. Prophecy has a few issues that detract from the experience, and is really too short, however at its cheap asking price, it's probably worth it for a quick adventure game with some incredible water physics.